


one more song about moving along the highway

by Lirazel



Category: Almost Famous (2000), The Virgin Suicides
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-04
Updated: 2009-02-04
Packaged: 2017-10-06 22:38:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirazel/pseuds/Lirazel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He glances through the rolled-down window, and for a heart-stopping moment, he thinks the pretty girl is dead before she blinks sleepily and gives him a lazy smile."</p>
            </blockquote>





	one more song about moving along the highway

It takes him years to figure out that Penny was more an archetype than a person, more real in his memory than she ever was in his reality, that her tragedy is that probably no one ever saw her as a real person instead of a rock-goddess-muse, even him, though he liked to tell himself that he was the only one who really knew her. She's the kind of girl he'll write a book about when he's finished growing up, or maybe a screenplay, _the woman who taught me about life_, and hide all the real behind the label of fiction.

He likes to imagine that she got away, that she went to Morocco and started a record store or one of those little shops that smell like incense and sell handmade leather journals and handmade silver jewelry and handmade silk skirts. Or maybe she just stayed in San Diego and got married to a good man who really saw her when he looked at her and raised kids who she gave very normal names and taught to love Zeppelin and Bowie, and if she banished Stillwater from ever being played in her house, well, that's just the price to be paid, right?

There are other girls, of course, and he's good to them (some of Mom's teachings, unlike the no-rock, no-white flour rules, can't be easily discarded), but he sort of hates himself for remembering their brown eyes as blue or their straight hair as curly because he can't hate Penny for taking over his life this way.

\--

He hears Carole King playing first, pumping out of the car radio, and he hasn't heard her in a long time (she was never really his thing anyways, though Mom loved her and talked about how deceptively simple her lyrics were), but the wistfulness of the song seems sort of fitting, and then he sees the arm hanging out of the window of the Mustang, too-girlish charm bracelet dangling from her wrist, cigarette dangling from her fingers.

He glances through the rolled-down window, and for a heart-stopping moment, he thinks the pretty girl is dead before she blinks sleepily and gives him a lazy smile.

(He doesn't think of Penny at all.)

\--

She's all California girl even if she just arrived from Michigan, dresses floating around her like butterflies, wildflowers in her hair even when there aren't, bangles jangling around her wrists. The world always seems to be summer when she's around, but a sad sort of twilight suspended forever, and when she tells him about her sisters, he understands why.

She tells him about Trip, too, and he tells her about Penny, and they both laugh at the way first love dominates your vision.

She smokes too much and dances in the back yard barefoot and doesn't understand why he wants to keep the apartment neat and there's always something simmering sad in her eyes, but he loves the way she cuddles up to him at night, her legs tangling with his, the strands of her hair smelling citrusy sweet, singing old songs under her breath. And she doesn't question his need to write or the fact that he'll probably never make much money at it or how hard he cries when John Lennon dies or the way Penny keeps popping up in his type-written words again and again and again.

(He thinks he loves her for that, but he's hesitant to apply that label to anyone that isn't Mom or Anita. Look what happened last time.)

\--

The Seventies are over and rock seems to have gone with it and the world keeps moving faster, not as soft, not as summer, and he wonders if either one of them can survive in this new world.

\--

The ethereal fabric of her dress hides the swell of her belly, but she stops smoking and starts holding the tape player against the roundness, like she thinks the baby will be able to hear Joni's voice or Jimi's guitar. She laughs, and for the first time there's a lightness to it, and she makes a joke about how she hopes it's a boy, because otherwise they'll have to name her Mary Bonnie Therese Cecilia, and then she'll hate them. He laughs, too.

Maybe they'll make it after all.


End file.
